NCLT goes digital easing operations

The National Company Law Tribunal is all set to join the country’s digital move.

Starting November, applicants at the dedicated bankruptcy courts can pay fees online, two people familiar with the matter said. Also, the government is working on a digital platform that will soon enable e-filing of cases, adding to operational ease amid a rising number of cases, said one of the people.

An email sent to the NCLT Delhi remained unanswered till press time Monday.

Besides Delhi, there are nine NCLT courts. Since the introduction of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, there has been a spike in the number of default cases landing in the tribunal. For example, Mumbai NCLT is getting more than 100 fresh applications every day now, compared with about 60 cases at the beginning of the year.

The fees the NCLT levies range from Rs 5 for obtaining a true copy of an order to Rs 10,000 for filing a case over oppression and mismanagement at a company.

“The online move will help save man hours as NCLT officials are to deal with huge logistics works. The digital push will also add to the ease of filing applications and making payments,” said a government official, who did not want to be identified.

Filing of an application currently requires paper works, which the new digital system is going to end.

This will help also at a time when these quasi-judicial bodies are expected to face a deluge of cases related to the companies that the Registrar of Companies (RoC) had struck off the list of active establishments. The RoC removed them from the list as they weren’t regularly filing their balance sheet with the registrar.

There are about two lakh such companies which were removed from the RoC list and about 30,000 cases related to such companies are expected to come up before the Mumbai NCLT alone, ET reported two weeks ago.